“Testing for Ebola is done at the CDC. According to a CDC spokesperson testing for Ebola takes 1-2 days after they receive the samples. The primary testing is PCR. This is performed on blood that has been treated to kill and live virus [sic]. So far CDC has tested samples from around 6 people who had symptoms consistent with Ebola and a travel history to the affected region.”

Update: The ABC New York report has since been updated to now say:

“Testing for Ebola is done at the CDC. According to a CDC spokesperson, testing for Ebola takes one to two days after they receive the samples.”

The PCR is completely unreliable for a disease diagnosis. Why? Two reasons. First, technicians start with a tiny, tiny sample of genetic material from the patient. This sample may or may not be part of a virus. Mistakes can be made. Obviously, the techs want the sample to be viral in nature; otherwise, the diagnostic test will be complete bust.

But more importantly, the whole rationale for PCR is wrongheaded. Doctors and researchers only find a miniscule bit of hopefully relevant material in the patient to begin with. The PCR amplifies that bit so it can be observed.

But to consider the possibility that a virus is causing a disease in a patient, there must be huge numbers of that virus working actively in his body.

The PCR never establishes that.

Finding a tiny trace of viral material in a patient says absolutely nothing about whether he is ill, has been ill, or will become ill.

If Kent Brantley and Nancy Writebol, the two Americans who are now back in the US, were merely tested with the PCR to establish a diagnosis of Ebola, no one has any idea whether they have Ebola.

People wrongly assume that, because patients spew blood and collapse, a tiny amount of Ebola virus inside those patients will kill them. Not so.

Another wrong assumption is: the human immune system is helpless in the face of such a vicious germ. Also untrue.

As I mentioned in a previous article, don’t be misled by pronouncements that “previously healthy people,” exposed to a virus, suddenly collapsed and died.

You have no idea whether those people (health workers, for example) were previously healthy. A very detailed investigation by competent and unbiased people is necessary to establish the truth.

One of the cornerstones of (fraudulent) AIDS mythology is that a group of previously healthy men, being treated at the UCLA hospital, had their immune systems wiped out by HIV and only HIV.

This was an enormous lie. While conducting researching for my book AIDS Inc., I studied the published medical summaries on those men and it was obvious, from the number and types of medical drugs they’d taken in the past, that they were anything but “previously healthy.” In other words, a number of factors contributed to their immune-system collapse.

There is a familiar medical term: “titer.” It is the measure of concentration or, roughly speaking, quantity of a particular germ in a patient’s body. There is a method of testing.

It’s a crucial test.

That’s how technicians can determine the likelihood that a patient’s immune system is not warding off a germ; the titer is very high.

Simply saying a tiny trace amount of a germ in a patient’s body is proof of disease is false.

During the fake Swine Flu “pandemic,” I corresponded with a highly respected British researcher. I asked him whether any reputed Swine Flu patients were being tested for titer.

Shockingly, he said he had no idea. It didn’t bother him that he had no idea. His attitude was neutral, as if I’d been asking whether patients were being fed oatmeal or corn flakes.

I see no evidence that any patient who has been diagnosed with Ebola has been given a rigorous and all-important titer test.

The “hot zone” areas of Ebola, Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia, have been decimated for a long time: war, extreme poverty, malnutrition, starvation, contaminated water supplies, exposure to toxic industrial chemicals, vast toxic overuse of antibiotics, pesticides (some of them banned in other countries), expired and unrefrigerated medicines, vaccines (which, when given to people whose immune systems are already hanging on by a thread, can be lethal).

But we only hear about Ebola. Who knows what the people (including health workers) in those areas have been exposed to? A toxic chemical, for example, could cause explosive bleeding.

Combine this information blackout with the fact that the prominent diagnostic test for Ebola is deceptive and worthless, and you have a horribly perfect storm.

And I would add, an opportunity to foist and promote yet another pandemic fear to the world.

As for mainstream reporting, I can tell you this. In the past, during “epidemics,” I approached several journalists with the basic information in this article. To a person, they backed off. They didn’t want to touch it.

These were people who’d responded favorably to other stories I’d given them. But this? Too hot. Too corrosive. Too dangerous to their reputations. Too destructive to the medical disease paradigm. Too revealing of medical crimes.

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com

38 comments on “Ebola: The US diagnostic test is utterly unreliable”

You are playing “telephone” with your sources, Jon. You took the second-hand word of ABC News, repeating hearsay about what a spokesperson from the CDC supposedly said, instead of looking it up at the CDC itself. The PCR test is by no means the only one used, nor the primary one. There is no “primary” test. With hemorrhagic fevers, they have similar symptoms to many other diseases like malaria at first, so FOUR test methods are used as a differential diagnosis. The bug may fool one test, but it won’t get by four (on top of clinical observation). Here’s the material from the CDC itself:

“Antigen capture enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) testing, IgM ELISA, polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and virus isolation can be used to diagnose a case of Ebola HF within a few days of the onset of symptoms.

“Persons tested later in the course of the disease or after recovery can be tested for IgM and IgG antibodies; the disease can also be diagnosed retrospectively in deceased patients by using immunohistochemistry testing, virus isolation, or PCR.”

Each and every lab test has a sensitivity and a specificity, all lab tests. Sensitivity is out of all of the positive tests how often does it pick up the specific disease it is looking for. Thus if it picks up the disease 80 % of the time, the sensitivity is 80%. If it picks up the disease every time it is 100%. Even if it picks up other diseases, if it always gets the desired disease all the time it is 100%. It is rare to have a test that is 100% sensitive.

Specificity is out of all of the positives, what percent is the disease one is looking for. If it picks up the disease and only the disease then it is a 100% specific. If it picks up other diseases, such as 20% of the time, then it is only 80%. Thus, even if it picks up all of the disease that one is looking for, yet it also picks up another disease or two and it makes a positive test 20% of the time with these other diseases, then the Specificity is 80%.

Look at the tests at Lab Corp for Celiac disease, these are sensitive. Thus if 100 people have celiac disease / wheat/gluten intolerance only 45 of those people will be positive on the sensitivity of the test, thus 55 of the people will test negative, even though they have the illness.

Celiac test is specific around 60%, thus out of 100 people, 40 positives will not have celiac, .

Tina – you make some excellent points. The reason I asked Invisible Mikey if he has background in microbiology, medicine, or tropical diseases was I wondered if he might have insights on this subject beyond that of an interested layperson.
He mentioned that there are four tests to diagnosis Ebola, as mentioned by the CDC. But its an error of logic to state that ‘the bug may fool one test, but not four’. I didn’t see on the CDC site anything about the sensitivity of those tests or their likelihood to produce a false positive result. I also didn’t see any information on the CDC website indicating that all four tests were used every time on a patient. I did a search on a Mayo Clinic website and they only mentioned two diagnostic tests.

None of my comments are an argument with Invisible Mikey. I’m a layperson regarding these matters, though I do have some background with science and statistics. I’m just trying to gather more information.

In reading between-the-lines Jon’s article, “Ebola: The US diagnostic test is utterly unreliable”, when he discusses PCR Test, it occurs to me that perhaps the PCR Test was originally just a lab reserch tool (‘take a small sample of some bio-material and blow it up so as to be able to look at it more easily) that was then repurposed for human use. (I would need to research that to see if my hypothesis is correct).

Many of us read Jon’s stuff because he’s an excellent researcher and a critical thinker (learned logic while studying Philosophy from a rigorous professor, taught the subject and offers a course in it now).

As I explained in my original reply, the article referenced another article that reported words said by a third party. It was simplicity itself to just go to the CDC web site and look up what tests they use instead of writing on the basis of hearsay. If I was impugning anything, it was the lack of investigative confirmation, not the science. Tina’s reply explains well why more than one test is often required. This disease has the same symptoms as a bad flu (or malaria) in the early hours, so multiple confirmation methods are necessary.

I’d say you’ve got yourself a straw man here because a fact sheet from 2010 on the website stating the tests used, IN GENERAL, for ebola, does NOT trump what the CDC spokesperson is telling us IS being used in the current situation.

It’s well-known to people dealing with dread diseases the LACK of specificity of the various tests that boast such sterling specificity. Too many variables in too many different cases to HONESTLY say they are diagnostic, but they DO look really impressive ON PAPER.

Jon did a great job of explaining in simple terms why we should beware of the scare mongering and is using the best evidence and sources available upon which to base it.

@nines,
The reason the info sheet is from 2010 is because the four test methods are STILL the ones in current use. They haven’t dropped any of them, or just focused in on PCR testing.

You’re not seriously suggesting that what ABC News reported, which may not even accurately reflect what the CDC spokesperson said, is more reliable than the actual material put out by the CDC, are you?

There’s no straw man involved. Direct sources of information are better than indirect sources, period. Jon did fine deconstructing what ABC said, and reporting the limitations of using a PCR test alone. However, it didn’t reflect a full picture of how differential diagnosis operates, or what the CDC does to ID the disease.

“Antigen-capture enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) testing, IgM ELISA, polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and virus isolation can be used to diagnose a case of Ebola HF within a few days of the onset of symptoms. Persons tested later in the course of the disease or after recovery can be tested for IgM and IgG antibodies; the disease can also be diagnosed retrospectively in deceased patients by using immunohistochemistry testing, virus isolation, or PCR.”

~~~~

Secondly, in the context of HIV/AIDS diagnosis using lab tests, there is a good backgronder from Jon on “Diagnosis, PCR, ELISA, and Western Blot fraud”, in the following article — which seems to have some parallels to ‘Ebola diagnosis’ — since it is stated in the CDC reference above, the words PCR and ELISA:

“…the whole rationale for PCR is wrongheaded. Doctors and researchers only find a miniscule bit of hopefully relevant material in the patient to begin with. The PCR amplifies that bit so it can be observed.

“But to consider the possibility that a virus is causing a disease in a patient, there must be huge numbers of that virus working actively in his body.

Dude. Please. That a number of tests are listed does not mean it’s protocol to use them all in all instances. It may actually be that there are MORE tests now since it’s so out of date. Great, they’ve got a bunch of tests to CHOOSE FROM.

The POINT is the CDC spokesperson said they’re using the PCR in the current situation.

I don’t think you should be so snide with Jon, when you are being the blockhead here.

And ABC may indeed be a sucky source, but no reason to expect they’d misrepresent what the CDC told them, and every reason to suspect they’d take down every word verbatim and report it.

No. Really. Stenographers love to impress their superiors.

If you want to get snide with somebody, why don’t you call the CDC and find out why they didn’t use ALL the tests listed on your sacred fact sheet? See what THEY have to say about them apples.

“Antigen-capture enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) testing, IgM ELISA, polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and virus isolation **CAN** be used to diagnose a case of Ebola HF within a few days of the onset of symptoms. Persons tested later in the course of the disease or a
fter recovery **CAN** be tested for IgM and IgG antibodies; the disease **CAN** also be diagnosed retrospectively in deceased patients by using immunohistochemistry testing, virus isolation, or PCR.”

They say “can”… not “is”, not “must”, not “shall”… they are listing things that CAN detect ebola, NOT ordering they all be used together to make a positive diagnosis.

Sheesh. You’ve got all these people digging all over the place to try to see what’s what, when it is plainly stated in your “direct source” that what the risible ABC reported coming out of the CDC spokesperson’s mouth was exactly in keeping with your “original source”.

And, again, we ALL know the MSM isn’t to be trusted with most things, but it is still true they can be trusted to report what the government tells them. That’s WHY we don’t trust them in general. It IS the best available source.

I’m re-reading the ‘Ellis Medavoy’ interviews that Jon did with that retired propaganda master who specialized in the medical field. (They are in the first Matrix series.) Doing so helps me bring a completely different perspective to this whole ebola matter. What I find particularly interesting, however, – is peoples reactions to this. Many people seem to Want to be scared of something that is overwhelming. Is this a natural human trait for self preservation ? Are they bored & want to enmesh themselves in something Big ? Is it a kind of death wish out of the sense that ‘at least my bills & other problems will end’ ?
Quite a puzzling phenomenon.

My non-medical and very sketchy understanding of ebola is once the “flu-like” symptoms are over it takes about 2 days to kill off the host, with about 5% survival rate (against next-to-no treatment). Therefore, and once again I am no expert, but doing the “maths” it seems that by the time the test results come back the patient is dead or “well on the way”. Whoopti-wotzit…!

There is another memory [I have] which maybe [of] a different virus, but wasn’t some American test lab infected 25 years ago by a virus [ebola] that was carried by a baboon or something like that? The building was bombed with cyanide with the order for no one to go in again and that whole “airborne” transmission thingy reared its head.

There is also the case of WHO/IMF lying about HIV/AIDs to cover up the fact the West had poisoned Africa by distributing tainted polio vials. That’s why my Thai wife’s ex husband died of “AIDs”. Total BS. He died of old age or “unknown causes”, but the doctors had been briefed by state to chalk down unknown causes deaths to AIDS and move the focus off Africa and the sad tragedy of well meaning medicine (which simply made an error because it did not predict the consequences of growing serum cultures in the kidneys of live monkeys).

I appreciate you bringing up the point that so called healthy people who drop dead from Ebola or HIV may not have been as healthy as claimed. The germ theory is absolutely false. I heard it put this way by chiropractor Fred Barge: if you have a dump (a toxic, or immunity weakened body), it will attract rats (germs). The rats did not create the dump, but simply found a hospitable environment. If you poison the dump (using drugs/radiation/etc.) the rats will leave, but eventually, they will return because it’s still a dump. And if you poison them long enough, eventually you’ll get Super-Rats immune to the poison (like we’ve seen happen with bacteria). Germs do not create disease–rather viruses and bacteria are attracted to, and thrive in, bodies which are already immune compromised (though by outward appearances, the person may appear to be “healthy”). A truly healthy body, with a properly functioning nervous system, can fend off ANY disease.
Thanks for all your research Jon, you’re a light in a darkened world.

Is this a typo? “That’s how technicians can determine the likelihood that a patient’s immune system is not warding off a germ; the titer is very high.” Is that /not/ supposed to be there? It makes more sense, that if the patient IS warding off a germ, that the titer would be very high. This is an important point to understand in explaining this to others. Thanks, Jon!

No. That’s not a typo. High titer means the immune system is NOT strong enough to overcome the disease. The count only gets high if the immune response has been weak or slow or otherwise ineffective against the invading virus.

It seems to me the Washington Putz’s article surreptitiously and posthumously blaming the Russians for potential “ebola weaponisation” shows where this is headin’…. how will the sheeple react? My bet is they will die quietly and as mindless as ever.

Once again, I pray to God it is one of their childish hoaxes to pop placebo pills.

The test PCR is supposed to test for virus present in the sample by amplifying even trace amounts found in the blood. However, if the patient is in the early stages the virus is till in the cells replicating itself (incubation period) and perhaps none or very few would be present in blood samples. This is alarming in the sense that is the cdc holding onto the patients long enough just in case and are they doing a second test on fresh samples to follow up over time??? They were flat busted for not doing proper testing with the swine flu in 2009. In this case they over inflated it and CBS busted the story, many doctors suggested they asked states to stop testing because it was an epidemic already has the President declared and the government had bought 250 mill doses of vaccines.
The headline ran for a while :The lead paragraph of this CBS article states, “If you’ve been diagnosed ‘probable’ or ‘presumed’ 2009 H1N1 or swine flu in recent months, you may be surprised to know this: odds are you didn’t have H1N1 flu. In fact, you probably didn’t have the flu at all. That’s according to state-by-state test results obtained in a three-month-long CBS News investigation.” http://www.cbsnews.com/news/swine-flu-cases-overestimated/

THIS PURELY MY OPINION IN THIS PARAGRAPH!!! SO, is it reasonable speculation that they are under estimating ebola ?? It certainly is a good question…..WE DO NOT HAVE A VACCINE FOR THIS ONE!!! Many NIH docs and others have come forward with some options but nothing on the scale that would cover 300 mill plus people in America. I can certainly be cautious and not naive enough to think for a moment what limited supplies they do have will not go to general public first. One way to ensure the people to do not panic and things get out of hand until they are prepared would be to conceal these tests.

You can confirm that even Dr. Kent’s first test came back negative ;”He was tested twice for malaria on Wednesday and took a pair of Ebola tests afterward. He did not have malaria and his first Ebola test was negative. The second was not.”
Here is a quote from another example: According to cogent information gathered by this paper, Rev. Brother Patrick Nshamdze, was tested positive after he supposedly came in contact with a patient who died from the virus.

Our information divulged that on the 17th of this month, his specimen was taken and the result, which came on the next day (July 18), proved negative.

Not being satisfied, the report further divulged, the ailing Catholic hospital director decided to seek further treatment abroad, but his trip was subjected to Ebola test.

It was based on this that he did another test on Tuesday, July 29, 2014, which proved positive, contrary to the first test he underwent.

The symptoms of Ebola are the same as that of scurvy. however testing the results of mega dosage of intravenous Vitamin C cannot proceed under pharmaceutical tyranny. Is there Vitamin C depletion under Ebola infection? Are there any results from at least some high dosages of Liposomal Vitamin C? None of these questions can even be asked because the Church of Holy Pharmaceutical Cartels says there is no treatment. A [startpage.com] search of relevant data reveals there is a possibility of ameliorative treatment however as usual it is being suppressed in favor of some other extremely expensive solutions.

sounds interesting especially with conditions with which the first cases where established.
need for more research to be done.
the idea of titre method is good.
PCR may be good but it also has its reservations.

The American diet has been engineered for the demise of our immune system for the last 40 years. GMO’s Then pump us FULL of antibiotics and chemicals then just add the smallest bit of virus and watch people DIE.Then add in the lies and fraud from ABC,NBC,CBS,MSNBC, CNN, and—Wa-La pandemic, quarantine, control. NO-ON goes any where with out permission. Every system on earth since the beginning of time goes this way sooner or later. CDC says 40,000 people per year die in the US each year from the flu. EVERY YEAR. No big deal.

Mineral depletion of the soil (and ocean animal die off!!!) started in earnest in North America 110 years ago due to the damming up of rivers for the building out of “Tesla AC power distribution”! The mineral silt from the river floods was no longer reaching the nearby farmland (and the oceans). And, electricity to the home did away with the burning of wood for heat ; wood ash was very coveted for farming — due to its mineral content (look up US Patent #1 (as in the US patent number one)). This was a double whammy on our health!

The underlying natrualpathic science behind this is that… what are called genetic disorders are due not to gentics but due to mineral dificiencies (in plant life, in animal life, and in human life). It has been shown through nutritional science that trace minerals act as NECESSSARY ‘co-factors’ in the ‘bio chemical reations’ which take place at the cellular and DNA/RNA levels. By NOT supplying our bodies with the ‘co-factors’ (trace minerals and other vitamins and certains fats) (like not having the proper amount of oil in your car), the cells, the DNA, the RNA are simply just not able to carry out their job properly…. and, over time, that causes chronic disease in a person — toxic chemical/poisons in the body notwithstanding. (e.g., it has been shown that ‘cystic fibrosis’ is due to a selenium difficiency)

Ask any animal husbandry farmer about mineral dificiencies in their animals ; they know about mineral supplementation for their animals because when they do it, it prevents costly vet visits. Medical doctors could learn a wealth of information from Vets!